Standardized Testing: Home

High-stakes standardized testing has a long history of exclusion, oppression, power, and control with deep roots in the landscape of American education. In this text, the events and circumstances that have forged the way of high-stakes testing are presented in a straightforward and accessible manner.

Written with humour, Making a Grade looks at how standardized testing practices quietly appeared, and then spread worldwide. This book situates mass exams, marks, and credentials in an emerging paper-based meritocracy, arguing that such exams often first appeared as "cameras" to neutrally record achievement, and then became "engines" to change education as people tailored their behaviour to fit these tests. Taking the perspectives of both examiners and examinees, Making a Grade claims that our own culture’s desire for accountability through objective testing has a long history.

Standardized assessments have long been part of the educative experience for students around the world. The high-stakes nature of these tests can have damaging and enduring effects for public school systems, particularly the youth. With the adoption of Common Core State Standards and mandated state-wide accountability measures, high-stakes tests, like the PARCC, gained quick and controversial notoriety. The paramount intention of this publication is to raise awareness of student experiences and perspectives of standardized testing. The High Stakes of Testing analyzes the experiences, relationships, thoughts, ideas, and opinions students have with standardized assessment measures. Interviews with seven students in Grades 3, 5, and 8 are examined through a governmentality lens to reveal the ways in which the youth are manipulated, regulated, and disciplined to view standardized testing as a natural part of what it means to be a public-school student.

Access to this title coming soon! As a teacher, what you want most is for your students to learn: to immerse themselves in rich and challenging content and leave your classroom better prepared for school and life. In English language arts and humanities, this includes developing the multifaceted reading, writing, thinking, and communication skills that constitute next generation literacy. But as a teacher, you also know how much is riding on THOSE TESTS: achievement tests from the national assessment consortia, the SAT and ACT, and independent state assessments. Is it possible to help students succeed on mandated tests without sacrificing your values, your creativity, and their education? Yes. This book shows you how. The authors model a backward design-based process for using these test items as a tool to create engaging and effective instruction. With 6 sample lessons, 42 instructional techniques, and tips for differentiation, this practical resource will empower you to help the students you love become capable, literate individuals who are also well-prepared to ace high-stakes tests.

Diane Ravitch-former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum-examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving America's schools: leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen, devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning, expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools, pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not "merit pay" based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores, and encourage family involvement in education from an early age.

Access to this title MIGHT be coming soon. The rise of high-stakes testing in New York and across the nation has narrowed and simplified what is taught, while becoming central to the effort to privatize public schools. However, it and similar reform efforts have met resistance, with New York as the exemplar for how to repel standardized testing and invasive data collection, such as inBloom. In New York, the two parent/teacher organizations that have been most effective are Long Island Opt Out and New York State Allies for Public Education. Over the last four years, they and other groups have focused on having parents refuse to submit their children to the testing regime, arguing that if students don't take the tests, the results aren't usable. The opt-out movement has been so successful that 20% of students statewide and 50% of students on Long Island refused to take tests. Both the success of the opt-out movement and teacher strikes reflect the rise of grassroots organizing using social media to influence policy makers at the local, state, and national levels.